Lawrence Wittner: The Bush Administration Is Pushing Ahead with Plans for Mini-Nukes

This May, before Congress adjourns for its Memorial Day recess, the Senate
and House of Representatives are scheduled to vote on the annual defense authorization
bill. This bill is expected to include several provisions in the Bush administration's
budget proposal that make preparations for the building of new nuclear weapons.

New nuclear weapons? Yes; there is no doubt about it. Armed with only 10,000
nuclear weapons, the U.S. government wants some more.

The Bush administration has requested $27.6 million to develop a nuclear "bunker
buster," plus another $9 million for "advanced concept initiatives"
that seem likely to include work on new, "small-yield" nuclear weapons.
The President also proposes an allocation of $30 million toward building a $4
billion "Modern Pit Facility" that would churn out plutonium triggers
for the explosion of thermonuclear weapons. And the administration wants another
$30 million to dramatically reduce the time it would take to prepare for conducting
nuclear test explosions.

Those who have followed the Bush administration's pronouncements regarding
nuclear weapons won't be surprised by these proposals. The administration's
2001 Nuclear Posture Review widened U.S. nuclear options by suggesting possible
use of nuclear weapons against countries that don't possess them. The following
year, the Nuclear Weapons Council, an administration committee, remarked that
it would "be desirable to assess the potential benefits that could be obtained
from a return to nuclear testing." In 2003, the Department of Energy's
Nuclear Security Administration began a study of building a nuclear "bunker
buster," and the head of its nuclear division proposed taking advantage
of the White House-prompted repeal of the Congressional ban on research into
low-yield nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, of course, the administration has scrapped the U.S. government's
long-term commitment to nuclear arms control and disarmamentmade in the 1968
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and reiterated as late as the NPT review conference
in 2000 -- by withdrawing from the 1972 ABM treaty and refusing to support ratification
of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

These shifts in nuclear policy are designed to get the U.S. armed forces ready
to wage nuclear war. The Nuclear Posture Review made it clear not only that
nuclear weapons would continue to "play a critical role in the defense
capabilities of the United States," but that they would be employed with
"greater flexibility" against "a wide range of target types."
Strategic nuclear weapons were fine for deterrence purposes. But their capacity
to annihilate vast numbers of people had horrified the public and, thus, had
led government officials to write them off as useful war-fighting implements.
Battered by popular protest, even the hawkish Ronald Reagan had agreed that
"a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." But this abandonment
of nuclear options stuck in the craw of the militarists who garrison the Bush
administration, who were (and are) determined to build "usable" nuclear
weapons....